This morning, I watched a BBC One programme where Fern Britton discussed with Tony Blair the importance of his Christian faith and its influence upon his decade-long political life as prime minister. She also explored with him the vision for his London-based Faith Foundation and the way in which faith and reason could co-habit by occupying a public space that is beneficial for all humankind. I shall return to Mr Blair’s policies later in this article, but one sentence that seized me in this sotto voce conversation was when he told Fern Britton that Christmas is a return to the essence of our faith.

Indeed, as an awkward Christian myself, I think I understand the statement quite well, particularly now as we find ourselves in the second half of the Advent season. But I also think that ‘returning’ to the essence of one’s faith is in itself a constant struggle requiring prayer, discernment, contemplation and honesty coupled with an ability to separate the chaff from the wheat and to question one’s own overarching priorities in life in such a way that it favours life over death, compassion over coldness and success over failure. This occurs in our personal and family lives, as much as with our friends and colleagues, all the time. But my experience has taught me that it could also happen in the political field, and I would like to tease out those few thoughts today by reflecting upon the political conflicts of the Middle East and by sharing with my readers my short “wish-list” of how things could ‘return to their essence’ in the lives of some of the inhabitants in this troubled region. And today, I would largely confine myself to Israel-Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq - with an obiter dictum on Yemen.

Let me start off with Israel-Palestine. Having written substantively about this conflict over the past decade, I would like to summarise it today in a rather elemental way by referring solely to a theological call in the Kairos Palestine Document issued two days ago by a group of Palestinian Christians representing a variety of churches and church-related organisations.

This document essentially demanded an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and echoed a clarion call that was made by South African churches in the 1980’s during the height of the apartheid regime. Whilst admitting that Palestinians had reached a political ‘dead end’, the signatories of this document challenged the international community - including church leaders and politicians worldwide - on their questionable support of, and contribution to, the Palestinian struggle for freedom. The signatories claimed the call was made in a spirit of faith, hope and love, although their language was rather animated at times and their names - with notable exceptions - did not carry much political weight. But the document itself [a kairos or an opportunity] was spot-on when it stated that the current efforts in the Middle East are confined to managing the crisis rather than finding pertinent and long-term solutions - or as I have often articulated in conflict resolution terms, they paper over the cracks but do not address the cracks themselves. And as the UK-based Ekklesia think-tank reported in its own piece, the document decried the emptiness of the promises and pronouncements about peace in the region, reminding the world community of the separation wall built on Palestinian land, the blockade of Gaza, the issue of settlements, the sense of humiliation felt by Palestinians in the face of Israeli military might and political arrogance, the plight of refugees awaiting their right of return, of prisoners in Israeli gaols, as well as the lack of fundamental freedoms for the Palestinian people - including the freedom of worship. Underlying this litany of grievances was clearly the indictment that International law was being flouted by a world comity that had paralysed itself in the face of an unfolding Palestinian drama.

The document also adopted the familiar language of liberation theology when it affirmed that the Palestinian [and Christian] connection to this land is a natural right, not merely an ideological or theological question, and it rejected any use of the Bible to legitimise or support political options and positions that are based upon injustice. Moreover, it added that the logic of peaceful resistance is seen to be as much a right as a duty, with the potential to hasten the time of reconciliation, and then segued on - and here I felt much less comfortable about the frail moral absolute and inherent political canon of the assertion - that if there were no occupation, “there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”

So my wish for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that this document would become a credible roadmap for peace amongst Palestinians and Israelis by focusing on justice and security in equal measure for both parties. No more land-grabs or gratuitous violence as evidenced only yesterday with the burning by settlers of the central mosque in the village of Kafr Yasuf in the northern West Bank region of Salfit. No more mutual killing and terrorism that denigrate the sanctity of all life. Rather, a genuine attempt to establish harmony amongst the two peoples and three faiths, although that could only be achieved with goodwill and good faith amongst the key protagonists as well as international key players - which would include the Quartet and the Arab League. In fact, in the words of a traditional song of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights which is being celebrated this week, is it not time to banish the darkness at long last with less dubious moratoriums, political spins or worse still with crocodile tears?

Now, what about Lebanon with all its confessional permutations, political intrigues and foreign agendas?
Over the past year, this small country has witnessed decisive parliamentary elections that yielded less-than-decisive results with the formation of a national consensus government bringing maladroitly together the majority and minority camps. Parliament also approved earlier this week a ministerial statement that defines the direction and parameters of the new government. Mind you, there are many people who are still diffident that Lebanon can ‘get its act together’ since so much that is at stake is controlled by outside actors. Lebanon continues to be willy-nilly a terrain for proxy wars - be they inter-Lebanese, Palestinian, American or French, Israeli, Syrian or Iranian, Saudi or Egyptian - and it is crucial for survival to ensure that the cedars regain their independence by re-acquiring their Lebanese identity, viability and purpose. Moreover, a further cursory look would also indicate that the Christians who once made up at least half the country have seen their numbers and political clout dwindle considerably through divisions, one-upmanship manoeuvres and gradual emigration.

In order to avoid dissensions, I would suggest that the cabinet under the premiership of Sheikh Sa’ad Al-Hariri should focus on two focal goals. The first one relates to the various UN Security Council Resolutions on Lebanon. After all, those international resolutions were accepted by all Lebanese political parties as they stress the right of the Lebanese state to control its whole territory and for the Lebanese army alone to bear arms. Therefore, the new cabinet faces a duty to ensure the protection of Lebanese independence and the strengthening of its state institutions. But before readers interject with an “we-know-where-he-is-going”, let me add that this does not necessarily entail falling out with Syria, removing article 6 on the issue of arms from the ministerial statement or waging a war against Hizbullah. After all, the political inter-state contacts between Lebanon and Syria are steadily growing, and a realist would add that national resistance is still a component that not only deters Israel but also helps keep the peace by avoiding confrontation. It is equally necessary to allow the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to reach its impartial judgment (albeit the judges will be hard-pressed in their decision), and for the national dialogue under the aegis of the president of the republic to continue tackling inter alia the issue of arms.

The second challenge that the government should take on board is the Palestinian issue. It is quite clear that a majority of the Lebanese do not want the Palestinians to be permanently settled or naturalised as this would upset the demographic balance of the country. Nor do they wish them to take over chunks of the economy, remain a security problem (as has been the case in some camps where armed groups have operated beyond the reach of the government), or impinge upon Lebanese sovereignty. This is explicable, but the Palestinians also need to be treated like human beings with civil and human rights (including work opportunities, home ownership, access to basic education and health services) so that they are not merely viewed as a security threat to be disarmed, but rather as a community entitled to live a dignified life until their national trauma of exile is resolved and they can exercise their right of return. In fact, this is what Ahmad Jibril, from the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), alluded to yesterday in an interview with Ghassan bin Jeddo on Hiwar Maftouh (Open Debate) on Al-Jazeera TV. He stipulated that only a convergence of the security, humanitarian and political issues would ensure an agreement between the Lebanese authorities and Palestinians in Lebanon. Given that many of the armed Palestinians outside the camps are located in Beirut’s suburbs in the Nehmeh Hills as well as the Beka’a Valley, and in the training camps of Sultan Yaqoub, Kfar Zabad and Qusaya, his words should be studied by all politicians. In fact, what counts now in Palestinian terms in Lebanon is the re-building of the Nahr el Bared camp as well as the development of a new governance system so that the camps can be managed by the Palestinians themselves through popular committees, but with security (and therefore sovereignty) primarily in the hands of the Lebanese authorities. As a new relationship is forged between the Lebanese and Palestinians that oversteps the painful fault-lines of history, the continued efforts of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee (LPDC) to address and improve tangible problems related to Palestinian living conditions, personal legal status, and work opportunities becomes invaluable in the medium term.

My wish for Lebanon is that its politicians labour to represent the wishes of their constituencies, and that their schisms do not lead to political initiatives that only serve to weaken the country whilst purportedly strengthening personal fiefdoms or sowing discord and violence. This applies essentially to the Christians as they are the weaker side with the more critical divisions when compared with the Shi’i, Sunni or Druze communities. Moreover, I also wish the different countries involved in the Lebanese geo-political tug-of-war to stop using Lebanon as a training ground for their confrontations. After all, would they be happy if the wars they have been waging on Lebanese soil were transported onto their own soils?

A Lebanon concerned with national sovereignty must also think creatively of turning to its advantage the regional and international yearning to preserve a peaceful country. So I hope that the new Hezbollah political document, unveiled on 30th November by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, will be a fresh departure in defining relations with other parties. I am keenly aware that there are political pundits who believe that this new document - succeeding the one from 1985 - is defending Hizbullah’s parallel state without abandoning its ideological principles or strategic objectives whilst simultaneously forcing its priorities on Lebanon’s state and society. Yet, it would be counter-intuitive if the Lebanonisation of this significant movement would buttress the notion of resistance as its sole guiding principle on the Lebanese arena. Devoid of collective responsibility, this would eventually freeze the whole country and wreak further havoc without exception upon all eighteen confessions.
Finally, let me focus on Iraq as it struggles between modernity and democracy on the one hand, and factionalism tinged with large doses of bloody violence on the other. What is my wish for this particular country?

I would like to start off by ushering into my article once more the interview Tony Blair gave to Fern Britton today. I do this because we in Britain are now witnessing the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war as the latest attempt to get to the truth of the war that was waged in Iraq. The former prime minister is expected to appear before this committee early next year in order to give [public] evidence to this august body and explain why he used the WMD as a causus belli for his war with Iraq.

As a former supporter of Tony Blair who was let down by his myriad subterfuges let alone by his sycophancy toward the Bush Administration and his gross political misjudgements, I re-discovered a new face to this complex barrister turned politician - one that is perhaps a tad more thoughtful and introspective, less arrogant or certain about his own being, and even admitting in a rather roundabout way that he had erred in using vainly the WMD in the case against Iraq. Only today, Sir Ken Macdonald, former director of Public Prosecutions and barrister in the London Chambers, mounted a swingeing attack against Blair by adding that our British troops are warriors who were “cast carelessly into death’s way by a Prime Minister lost in self-aggrandisement and a governing class too closed to speak truth to power”. Perhaps I wouldn’t presume to go so far and would state instead that I too am against appeasement and procrastination so long as it is not a pick-and-choose commodity, and that Blair might have sold us the wrong line but thought that he was doing the right thing albeit for entirely the wrong reasons. Yet, even this line of reasoning cannot exonerate him as there is thin line in politics between mendacity and narcissism, and his overall Middle East record disallows me to trust his motivations let alone endorse his judgments.

But having stated my case, let me also add that a few things catch my attention in Iraq today. Starting with the obvious one, I would refer to the horrific bombings that have plagued parts of the country after a two-year lull. They have further shaken the security of the country and led toward more instability. But the bombings mask the sobering fact that politics and governance remain dysfunctional. For instance, politicians have made little progress on the principal constitutional issues cleaving them - particularly on how to share or divide power and oil wealth, or how to settle territorial disputes - particularly in Kirkuk which remains the real prize for Arabs and Kurds where emotions run highest and oil reserves are richest.

The same is also true of the Ninewa province and its capital Mosul. Caught largely between Arabs and Kurds, one comes across ethnic and religious minorities in whom the central government has invested little interest. While true that Ninewa is majority Arab with a strong Kurdish minority, it also counts a number of smaller groups - Christians, Yazidis, Turkomans, Shabaks, Akai - that admittedly comprise a mere 10% of the population but are nonetheless concentrated in disputed borderlands between Kurdistan and Arab Iraq. They have suffered a disproportionate share of ethnic attacks, as well as the hardship caused by war, occupation and inter-communal violence. At times co-opted, at others threatened by one political camp or another, they fight for sheer survival today and have become vulnerable pawns in a contest that often sees them as little more than cannon fodder. The recent initiative to re-build St Elijah’s Assyrian Monastery just south of Mosul - destroyed in 2003 at the outset of the invasion - is one small step toward helping bolster those smaller communities.

But in the midst of those weighty issues, my most urgent wish list for Iraq is that the latest compromise on the electoral law that required many rounds of voting in parliament let alone much horse-trading would herald new parliamentary elections in March 2010 so they would help stabilise the political topography of Iraq and encourage the drawdown of US troops.

In the midst of those three important axes of conflict, I would also briefly like to draw the attention of readers to two simultaneous wars raging in Yemen. One is pitting the central government in Sana’a against the Houthi rebels of Zaydi Shi’i background in the northern Yemeni provinces of Sa’ada and Hajjah - resulting in a huge humanitarian disaster (as evidenced by the refugees in the al-Mazraq camp). The other is between the central government and separatists in southern provinces such as Shabwa or the Radfan region who are opposed to the unity deal of 1990 that incorporated the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and the southern port of Aden into the present unitary state. But roughly speaking, this is almost a proxy war between Iran and Arab countries: Yemen is the latest card to try and manage the emerging Shi’i-Sunni tensions and reflects Saudi Arabian and other Arab fears that Yemen could also turn into a haven for al-Qa’eda terrorists.

So what will it be then? A Middle East that helps recapture the essence of our faith and undergirds the fundamentals of truth and honesty at a time when the three Abrahamic faiths are celebrating their feasts? Or a hoax that will lead nowhere so that 2010 will start and end with the same recycled arguments, pretexts, impasses, spins, mendacities and perils of 2009?

A Chinese proverb claims that “the finger that points at the moon is not the moon”. My overall wish today is that politicians of all colours stop staring helplessly at their political fingers and focus instead on looking at the moon itself. But would they?

As you will have already noted from the letterhead of this Open Letter, I do not represent any Armenian organisation, institute or political group. On the contrary, I write to you in my private capacity as an Armenian who also happens to be an EU citizen and who has visited Armenia - the symbolic heartland for all Armenians - only twice in his life.

In other words, I do not give myself the right to lecture you, advise and admonish you or even berate and heckle you over the decisions you are adopting in relation to the two protocols mooted for signature in Zürich on 10th or 13th October between the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers in the presence of the Swiss foreign minister. After all, much as my ethnicity and genes are irrevocably Armenian, I am neither a citizen of the Republic of Armenia nor one if its tax-paying residents.

So why do I grant myself the right to address this letter to you, with copy to HE Ambassador Dr Vahé Gabrielyan in London, as well as publish it EU-wide, when I turned down the opportunity to travel to Paris to meet with you in a public forum?

I respectfully submit that my reasons emanate from a deep-seated concern as to whether this agreement is indeed helpful let alone beneficial for the republic of Armenia - and by osmosis for Armenians in the Diaspora. But let me start off, as did Vartan Oskanian, former Armenian Foreign Minister and now Director of Civilitas Foundation in Yerevan, by stating that I too support unequivocally the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey, the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border and the resolution of all outstanding disputes between the two countries. I also support your constitutional right, even your presidential prerogative, to proceed with those protocols. After all, I am not willing to act out the role of an Armenian who exhibits visceral emotions, but rather one who struggles to uphold visceral convictions.

So allow me to posit in this Open Letter a few Open Questions to Your Excellency as you ponder over the status of your future relations with Turkey within the wider Caucasus region. And here, I do not wish of necessity to go over the issues that have been dealt with in a veritable plethora of analyses and articles pointing out to the three fundamental drawbacks of those two protocols, namely, the judicial overlap between territorial integrity and actual borders as distinct de jure and de facto issues, a relinquishment from recognising the Armenian genocide and the isolation of Artsakh (Nagorny-Karabagh) from the Armenian political mainland. More learned minds have nitpicked those lacunae in great depth and have argued that they are inimical with Armenian overall interests as they impact upon a whole range of issues from historicity to oil or gas pipelines.

The two painfully practical queries I import into this debate are simply the following:
(1) Those protocols might well be signed in Switzerland, but I understand they need to be ratified by both the Turkish and Armenian parliaments within six weeks. In my opinion, such ratification is not a foregone conclusion, and it might well be that Turkey could use its considerable diplomatic skills to prevaricate upon such ratification as a source of pressure upon Armenia to resolve the Karabagh issue in Azerbaijan’s interest. This political truism becomes even more self-evident when one wonders how Turkey could reconcile its willingness to forge ahead with this agreement and open its border with Armenia with its promise to Azerbaijan that it will not do so until the Karabagh issue has been resolved (in its favour). In one flourish, Turkey will have pleased the Americans, satisfied some EU member-states about its seriousness to join our European club, spread its Turkic influence in the whole region (Russia notwithstanding) and left Armenia even more vulnerable than it truly is now.
(2) On the historical sub-commission dealing with genocide, and assuming I delete all my personal memory banks let alone forfeit my amazement that Armenia seems to have regressed from all achievements to date for international recognition, I would enquire how Turkey could even allow the mechanism for such discussion to proceed when its own Penal Code (under Art 301 et al) renders it a criminal offence to mention the word “genocide” in public fora. Have previous Commissions, the likes of the ICTJ and TARC, not ended in abject failure because Turkey and its array of apologists did not accept the outcome of their recommendations? Is it any wonder that international genocide scholars are now flummoxed that a sub-commission will knowingly unravel all the recognitions of the past decades and allow Turkey to claim to all and sundry that Armenia itself is still perusing the ‘scientific’ data on whether genocide was committed under cover of WWI? Do you not think there has been ample forensic examination of archives by independent genocide scholars such as the IAGS that we are now re-booting ab initio the whole chapter of recognition with this retreat? I personally agree that it is high time we Armenians, as well as Turkey, learn to address the issue of genocide with soul-searching probity, but surely not at any cost and in this way.
Mr President, you are certainly no traitor or quisling as some people have defamed you on the basis of those controversial protocols. After all, if I were to exercise good faith, I would even affirm that you are endeavouring to protect the global interests of a landlocked Armenia at a time of changing realities in the Caucasus and of ominous economic difficulties facing Armenia. But in so doing, are you not repeating the Palestinian syndrome of “cosying up” to Israel - their erstwhile foe - in the hope that they might derive some responsive benefit from this rapprochement whilst all they get are more political rejections or dangerous deceptions? Should you not have been much more transparent and forthcoming with the Diasporan Armenians and listened to them before the announcement was made on 31st August (rather than now during your tour when the gap is so wide and the mistrust so palpable)? And going back to Israel, a country many Armenians are fond to use as comparison, does Israel not listen to its Jewish lobbies worldwide and even uses them to enhance its own national interests?
As an Armenian whose grandparents were survivors of the genocide, but who wishes to let bygones be bygones on the basis of mutual confidence-building and equitable grounds, I regret you have not won me over with your arguments or documents. Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with [Sir] Winston Churchill that it is much wiser to jaw-jaw than to war-war, is it not even wiser for a small and beleaguered Armenian nation to ensure that its jaw is not broken as a consequence of this agreement? The protocols have created fissures within Armenia itself, and certainly with the Diaspora, and true statesmanship will never have allowed this issue to become one of us versus them. Perhaps your mandarins at the Foreign or Diaspora Ministries accompanying you could find a diplomatic démarche to re-visit the discussions with Turkey - perhaps assisted by Diasporan Armenian leaders and in the presence of the USA, Russia and the EU - to correct the flaws in the agreement before a signature date becomes incumbent and the return football match sets the ball rolling again. If this were an option, albeit quite remote, I will be the first person queuing up to defend your agreement for a fresh page with Turkey and its peoples.
Mr President, like countless other Armenians with open minds, big hearts and democratic cultures, might I respectfully remind you that you will not necessarily ensure the security of Armenia with those protocols. Rather, instead of a political catharsis that would transform the region and lift up the interests of Armenia within it, you might in fact end up in complicity with a grave error. That is something neither wisdom nor time would succeed in hindsight to expunge from all our lives - irrespective of whether we live in Yerevan, in Paris, Los Angeles and Beirut, or in Stepanakert.
Much as I appreciate the heavy burden you carry on your shoulders - almost unfathomable for an ordinary person like me who does not hold political office in Armenia - I also pray that the wisdom of 3000 years of Armenian collective history let alone numerous experiences in the face of adversity will guide you in your tough choices between today and 10th October.
Very Truly Yours,
Harry Hagopian
International Lawyer & EU Political Consultant
London W8

On 4th June, at Cairo University in Egypt, President Obama unfurled a roadmap that sought to drive his vision for helping reverse the cumulative tensions and stereotypes clouding Muslim and Arab popular relations with America. His much-touted address tried to brake the alarming tumescence that had set in those relations during the past eight years of the Bush Administration. As Roger Cohen opined in an editorial in the New York Times entitled Dreams aside, Obama is moving methodically to dismantle the Manichean Bush paradigm - with us or against us in a global battle of good against evil labelled the war on terror - in favour of a new realism that places improved relations with the Muslim world at its fulcrum.

Mind you, restoring American credibility is not as facile as a presidential address here, a statement or photo-opportunity there. Nor will it happen by over-investing in Obama’s middle name of Hussein as a sign of genuine empathy and ease with the Muslim faith and culture. It requires a whole host of US proactive future steps to prove to an open-minded but sceptical audience that US intent matches with action, or that suggestions go hand-in-hand with implementation. Mind you, it is equally clear that the whole onus of proof cannot be laid on American shoulders alone. Corrective measures also need to be taken by Arabs and Muslims to prove their own readiness to heed the Obama presidential message by improving the human rights and welfare of their own peoples who often suffer internally as much as externally in different ways.

President Obama dedicated a substantive portion of his address to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He underpinned his belief in a two-state solution as well as an end to illegal Israeli settlements - whether mere mobile outposts or more concrete edifices, whether new or existing and expanding ones - that are still being built on occupied Palestinian lands.

So, in a nutshell, what about Israel-Palestine?

President Obama has identified the resolution of this conflict as the touchstone for improved relations with the Muslim and Arab Worlds. This is why he has instructed George Mitchell, his special envoy (in the region again this week), to ensure that both sides apply themselves diligently toward midwiving the birth of a Palestinian state. But to succeed in this irenic quest, he must realise that Israel under Benyamin Netanyahu will need to concede to some self-evident realities that are based on International law. The first such concession is that a Palestinian state - were it to come into existence - cannot be a Bantustan but a sovereign, viable and contiguous entity. In other words, the settlements, separation walls, roadblocks, by-pass roads, blockades, evictions and gratuitous collective humiliation cannot remain ineradicable facets of Israeli political topography.

Yet, even such constituents alone are insufficient for a peacemaking partnership. Words have to be followed by deeds: after all, did the late Israeli prime minister Levy Eshkol not say once, “I promised, but I did not promise to keep my promises.”

One way of moving forward would be for Israel to accept the twice-rebooted Arab Initiative of 2002. It implies recognition of Israel by the entire fifty-seven Muslim states in return for its withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967. This in itself would largely counter the political angst, radicalisation, extremism and religious polarisation of societies - often with nefarious consequences - that foments the whole region. But what can no longer happen is for Israel or the USA to wring out more ‘concessions’ from the Arab countries under the guise of further ‘incentives’ for the sake of future Israeli corresponding ‘flexibility’. For instance, Arab states cannot be expected to allow the Israeli airline El Al to fly through their airspace, or open commercial and consular representations and grant visas for Israelis, without first assuring Israeli concrete and verifiable moves towards peacemaking. In a word, the Arab World should no longer churn out political freebies or new enticements without tangible and time-friendly political return. Otherwise, such a new list of unreciprocated quid pro quos would alienate the very popular base that the US Administration is endeavouring to win over with its outreach.

Indeed, anything less, I would argue, cannot move the momentum for peace forward, nor defuse the tensions that President Obama seems intent on harnessing during his term. So what happens will depend on Israel as the key player holding the trump card. But yesterday, PM Netanyahu’s half-hour policy speech at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv deflated any vision on how to move forward in the peace process with the Palestinians and with the larger Arab world. True, he crossed a personal ideological Rubicon by uttering the tricky words ‘Palestinian state’, with the US and EU even welcoming his speech, but here is my red flag! Mr Netanyahu, ever the slick salesman, attempted to divert attention from the land-for-peace territorial issues by focusing on economic, security and political relations. Furthermore, he removed the permanent status issues - including refugees and Jerusalem - off the table, emasculated the notion of Palestinian statehood and insisted upon recognition of Israel as a state for the Jews (with morbid implications for Palestinians under occupation as much as for Palestinian Arab Israelis within Israel). He talked of Palestinians almost as guests being allowed to live on “the land of his forefathers”, disembowelling in the process the corpus of past agreements - including the US-backed 2003 roadmap - and jeopardising future negotiations. Such a position, coupled with his emphasis on the Iranian nuclear issue, will lead to a standoff, and America will again face the ire of large numbers of Muslim and Arab grassroots who will see in the Netanyahu speech a defiant negation of President Obama’s overtures. Hence, the need for a robust and equitable US facilitation, and for a plausible pan-Arab reaction going hand-in-hand with a decision by the Palestinian Fateh and Hamas factions to stop their fratricidal brinksmanship, desist from killing each other (as in Qalqilya or Gaza) whilst proclaiming to be the handmaidens of the Palestinian dream, and put the Palestinian house in order again.

Anyone who has perused the editorials of the Lebanese constitutional thinker Michel Chiha about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - whether in Palestinian Chronicles or in his other writings - will have noted the clear distinction he often drew between Judaism and Zionism, and his dream for a land including Jews, Christians and Muslims living together in peace. In 1946, he wrote, “… The American interventions in Palestine are increasingly looking like they are dealing with a purely American question. It’s a pity that the people of the United States, today the most powerful in the world, would cover-up from their vantage point such an adventure; they are putting themselves in a definitive contradiction with their most sacred moral and political principles.” His formula, hauntingly ever-seasonal despite the passage of time, remains the moral agenda of many churches as well. For instance, the ‘World Week for Peace in Palestine-Israel’, organised last week by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, brought together individuals, congregations and organisations from all continents to advocate those very steps necessary for peace with justice. Earlier last month, another conference entitled Towards a New Christian Consensus: Peace with Justice in the Holy Land also assembled Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders representing the US-based National Inter-religious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East and commended President Obama to make Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace “a high priority of his presidency.”

As I have repeated ad nauseum ever since the Oslo chapter of negotiations, the resolution of this conflict is achievable. After all, the parameters are quite clear, but what is lacking is the political will amongst the Western and Arab powers to move beyond short-term interests in order to impress upon Israel the need to stop its prevarications and “sign on the dotted line”.
But President Obama’s speech was not all about Israel and Palestine. In his broad address, he also referred inter alia to the Maronites in Lebanon. So what are the developments besetting Lebanon in the wake of the 7th June parliamentary elections?
I owe my readers a confession. I had thought that the outcome of those hard-fought and increasingly negative elections between the two competing 8th and 14th March coalition blocs will have been much narrower. With a resurgence of sectarian and confessional arguments, and with the decibels mounting steadily on all sides, some pundits were predicting a narrow victory for the bloc led by Sa’ad Hariri from Al Mustaqbal (The Future) movement, whilst others thought that the corresponding bloc led by the Shi’i Hizbullah movement would move into power. However, now that the immediate dust of the elections has settled somewhat, it is clear that the difference in parliamentary seats between the 14th March bloc with its 71 seats and the 8th March bloc with its 57 seats has put paid to the argument that the so-called Lebanese Intifada of 2005 was nothing more than a fictive flicker in the wind. In fact, Hariri himself is willy-nilly the undisputed winner, and he and his allies have re-defined in some modest measure the political landscape of the country. Hopefully, this outcome might also catalyse a metamorphosis of Lebanese politics. No more a system of clans, tribes let alone former or present warlords dictating their terms and seats upon a hapless society, nor of virtual governance with a parliament that closes its doors almost at whim, and with obstructing one-thirds veto or overlapping governmental projects that pander to foreign agendas and stymie any political initiative. Lebanon might hopefully turn into a democratic, constitutionally-based and well-managed republic that feeds the hopes of its long-suffering people and rids them of the straitjackets occupying their political space.
But am I a tad too naïve, and where are we in Lebanon today? I suppose the weeks and months ahead will be the best weathervane as to whether Lebanon will succeed in soldering a sense of coming together, or whether rivalries, interests and one-upmanships from all sides will reign supreme once more. In fact, trolling the Lebanese blogosphere, one comes across a plethora of comments on the elections, including on the collapse of any independent “centrist” bloc at the ballot boxes. Therefore, one pessimistic line of argument goes, there will be no serious political realignments, the two camps will remain irreconcilable, and the parliament and future government will both look shockingly similar to the past four years.
Yet, I believe there are hints of a collective willingness to improve the political system. After all, the global realignments matter a lot on the Lebanese political terrain, and I believe that all the main players - from Syria and Saudi Arabia to the United States and arguably even Iran following its elections - are keen to ensure a level of stability for the country. But this requires some deep self-criticism by both camps since they disappointed their constituencies during this electoral chapter, and many of the pledges that were made by both parties were discarded unceremoniously in the heat of the electoral battles.

I believe the Christians are today the most vulnerable community in Lebanon. After all, one can still indulge in sweeping over-generalisations by stating that the Shi’i votes went to Hizbullah and Amal, the Sunni votes went to Al-Mustaqbal and the Druze votes went to the Progressive Socialist Party. But the Christian vote was fractured and dismembered, and there was nothing less than bitterness and rancour amongst the various parties. In one sense, the allegiance of the Al-Kata’eb Phalangist Party and the Lebanese Forces with the 14th March bloc, and the corresponding alliance of the Marada Party with the 8th March bloc, were not unexpected, but what let the angry cat out of the cage for a great many Lebanese was the role played by the controversial General Michel Aoun whose largest Christian party - the Free Patriotic Movement - chose to ally itself strategically with Hizbullah and in so doing splintered the Christian voice. Allying themselves with him were the largest Armenian political party in Lebanon - the Tashnaq - which in the past had maintained a neutrality in the Lebanese political jigsaw puzzle and had considered themselves as supporters of the incumbent president.

So will Lebanon break the glass ceiling, and will its politicians turn a crisis into an opportunity?

Let me start with the Christian communities per se. General Aoun is a political figure that is either adored or loathed in the country. One can either see his adulating followers carrying the orange emblems of his party in mass rallies, or else being reviled as an unstable leader whose shifting political stances are an indication that he is dangerously unpredictable and does not care one jot about the country but only about his own political future - namely that of becoming president. However, and although Aoun lost the election, his party nonetheless garnered the largest number of Christian seats in the new parliament [21 seats on his own, and 27 seats with his allies] through Shi’i as much as Christian support. So I hope that he will ponder over the lessons of this election and decide to play a judicious and constructive role that befits his political stature as leader of the largest Christian group. After all, the betterment of the beleaguered Christian community does not come through confrontation or vocalisation, but through collaboration and coordination. The other wild card, the Armenian Tashnaq party, only managed two parliamentary seats despite their huge numerical superiority in Lebanon [and region-wide]. So much so that the smaller Ramgavar and Henchak parties now enjoy parity in the number of Armenian deputies. This diminishes the impact that the Tashnaq party can wield in the new political configuration, and I believe that it too needs to ask some questions of itself, and then attempt to build bridges with its grassroots as it resumes its important political role.

An incoming new Council of Ministers headed in all likelihood by Sa’ad Hariri, and a new parliament whose Speaker will in all likelihood again be Nebih Berri, ought to prioritise the items that need to be addressed expeditiously. To begin with, and as the Minister of Interior Ziad Baroud indicated already, the government should investigate abusive electoral practices, from vote-buying to corruption and the lack of a standardised ballot. Perhaps it should also go further and examine the options available for empowering new generations of Lebanese men and women to become more involved in political life so that a new way of thinking, through new political faces and horizons, is teased out amidst the various constituencies.

But over and above procedural matters, I suggest three clear pressing priorities. They include the reform of the Elections law in order to move away from the current law agreed by most parties at Doha in May 2008 that perpetuates the status quo and bolsters communal loyalties and tribal politics, as well as the revival of the Constitutional Court, which both political blocs wish to enfeeble but which is a welcome need for the country, and a serious move forward in the on-off national dialogue.

Lebanese politics, although more democratic than other Middle Eastern countries, still cannot manage the government-versus-opposition formula that is followed in most countries. It opts for the consensual format, but even within consensus one has to acknowledge the reality of winners and losers. As such, and in an attempt to maintain a workable formula that does not paralyse the activities of the Council of Ministers, I suggest that the inevitable negotiations for the formation of a cabinet should also consider awarding the winners 50% of the ministerial portfolios, the losers 25% and the president would then nominate his share of 25% too - as such bolstering his presidential centrist credentials, but also acting as an arbiter between the two blocs when there are ineluctable deadlocks in policy-making or legislation within government.

The months ahead will be heady ones for both the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples - the former in their attempts to create a state from the ashes of occupation despite Israeli wilful recalcitrance, and the latter in their hopes to strengthen their state institutions and liberate them from inertia, interference and elitism. Both exercises will clearly have inevitable regional political and socio-economic consequences. But they will also have repercussions that go far beyond the region and will impact - either positively or negatively - President Obama’s vision and his unfurling roadmap for reconciliation.

So could it be done? I still believe so, despite numerous withering obstacles and dyslexic tactics, but only if it comes with the dogged determination of the parties themselves, the empowerment of allies, neighbours and friends and the tacit understanding that nobody should use excuses or justifications anymore to favour the personal over the national.

But will it be done? The answer to this Sisyphean question is by far the more challenging, critical and uncertain one for me!

I have not written for SOMA in a while, so the first thing I had to do when deciding to put pen to paper - or megabytes to hard disk - was to choose the theme for my current piece. After all, whilst it is true that some things tend to alter quite dramatically in Iraq, at least when viewed from our European end of the global periscope, it is equally true that the core issues I have opined about for some years now have remained petulantly resistant to change albeit in varying forms and intensity.

So would I choose to write about the small communities that are often mislabelled as minorities and which are at the receiving end of a large measure of discrimination and pressure? Or should I focus on the resurgence of violence that rears its ugly head in the country every time one talks about prospects and timelines of an American drawdown? Or should it be about the Sunni-Shi’i rivalries that often seem as deadly in their political ideology as they are unbridgeable in their theology? Or perhaps I should touch upon the sensitive matter of the over-10,000 Iraqis and a number of foreigners who have disappeared - many of them kidnapped - only to be released in return for unaffordable ransoms? Or should I re-centre on the Kurdish-Arab political one-upmanship that is making parts of the country teeter on the edge of another tense standoff in the Iraqi social mosaic?

Mind you, I suppose I could also play it “safe” and comment on the day-to-day developments in Iraq, with the wanton killings, arm-twisting, fear-mongering or deal-making, but we in Europe are thousands of miles away and are often less equipped - and less entitled - at assessing them. Besides, should we allow ourselves to be sucked into the minutiae of every-day politics, or ought we to offer our perceptions only in the hope that they could become helpful brushstrokes for those living in the country?

So my different political vignettes in this piece become relevant in underlining succinctly a set of stalemates that dog the whole country, so they might possibly focus the minds of politicians on the need to reform them or else suffer the consequences. To paraphrase Groucho Marx obversely, “This is my pretext. If you don’t like it, well, I have a lot of others.”

So to start with, let me encourage Iraqis preparing for their forthcoming parliamentary elections to establish a new national compact with a clear set of priorities. After all, despite a noticeable decrease of violence in the country, there are still outbreaks of fighting in Baghdad - for example, between the Sunni Sons of Iraq and the Iraqi Army - that keep politics dysfunctional and plant the allied army units squarely in the combustible mix. Fundamental conflicts over the division of power and the allocation of disputed [often oil-rich] territories and the management or sharing of those resources continue to simmer without much prospect for early progress. One danger I see from this political stasis is that if such pending matters are not addressed soon, they could well result in an enhanced struggle between Kurdish and Arab nationalism. This is why it is high time to conclude an agreement on a federal hydrocarbons law, as well as a settlement over Kirkuk and over the division of powers that would jointly pave the way for a consensus on introducing the necessary amendments into the Iraqi constitution.

But what could be done about Kirkuk? Last month, the UN handed the Iraqi government a report that might facilitate an end to decades of deadlock. It contained four options to help overcome disputes over control of Kirkuk and recommendations on fourteen other contested areas in northern Iraq. The options treated the province as a single unit, with each UN option put forward requiring a political agreement - admittedly a gargantuan task in itself - followed by a referendum.

And what is happening with Iraqi refugees? There are 3.8 million refugees who packed their belongings and fled to safety as a result of six years of sectarian killing. About 1.8 million were displaced internally, whilst the rest left the country - mostly to Syria or Jordan. According to the UN, only 195,000 internally displaced Iraqis came back to their own homes by end-2008, but officials hope that this figure could soon reach 400,000 in case of a possible improvement in the pulse of the country.

Finally, what about the marginalised smaller communities? Those disparate groups together share a commitment to the idea of a unified and multi-cultural country. Yet, the sustained pressures challenging them have resulted not only in multiple killings in Mosul or elsewhere in the country but in scores of them becoming refugees in the Kurdish provinces, with some groups even calling for an autonomous ‘safe zone’ centred on the Nineveh Plain as the optimal - although in my opinion decidedly rash and unhelpful - egress toward their physical security.

Iraq is a huge country, fertile, strategic and rich, that is caught up in a vortex of interests as much of its own making as that of other regional and global powers. If it wishes to extricate itself from its internecine struggles and move forward, its leaders should put the broader good ahead of narrower sectarian claims and then - vitally - educate their constituencies to do likewise.

My timorous query today is whether Iraqi sagacity and nous will help achieve this self-evident but mammoth task?

Let me take the reader for the space of a few short minutes to the heady and hopeful days of 2000 when our global village had ushered in a new millennium and had actually survived it without any major apocalyptic events despite all the pronouncements of impending gloom and doom. I was still living in Jerusalem then, heading both the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the Middle East Council of Churches as well as the Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee. The latter committee was the more hands-on instrument, a sort of an ecumenical task force, which dealt with existential issues impacting all four families of churches on a daily basis in the Holy Land.

One such issue of great import for the whole region was the process for peace (as distinct from a genuine peace process) between Israel and the Palestinians within the hopeful context of the Oslo negotiations. The churches were involved - and therefore I was involved - insofar as we strove to ensure that the Christian spiritual, moral, physical, financial and ultimately political interests of the Church of Jerusalem were not broadly squandered in the endless bargains between the negotiating sides under President Bill Clinton’s nerve-racking persistence. Together, we all left our fingerprints on policy-making by underlining our concerns - until the process collapsed under its own weight let alone the lack of good faith and good will. Again, the region was bereft of a timid opportunity for peace.

But another quite ambitious and admittedly exciting project that I was heading back in 2000 was the visit (it was euphemistically referred to as a pilgrimage to make it sound less political) of the hugely charismatic and media-savvy Pope John-Paul II to the Holy Land. I recall spending frantic hours upon hours organising the different dimensions of the pilgrimage with the Apostolic Delegate and the Latin Patriarch as well as with other ecumenical church leaders and members of my own Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee whose chair was the affable Anba Abraham from the Coptic Orthodox Church. I was also constantly liaising with Joaquim Navarro-Valls, the then official spokesperson of the Vatican, who was a consummate tactician and later became a helpful colleague and even friend.

I am peeling back the pages of my own little history by nine short years since the Holy Land is re-living in 2009 the last few exciting hours before another papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The euphemisms continue, as we refer again to a pilgrimage, not a state visit, and we call the land La Terra Sancta or the Holy Land rather than Jordan, Israel and Palestine or even the Occupied Palestinian Territories! Pope Benedict XVI arrives to Amman, in Jordan, on 8th May and it feels that some of the constants of 2000 have almost not changed over the past decade. There is no credible peace process, merely sound bites and tactical realignments, the Palestinians are far too divided in their own little dilapidated political house of cards to matter much at all at the moment as they ostensibly implement the orders of their political ‘allies’ in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or the USA, whilst Israel has voted in a new hard-line government that spurns a two-state solution anyway and has chosen as foreign minister a man who incarnates [in the words of Uri Avnery, the erudite Jewish peace activist from Gush Shalom] the broader meaning of fascism in Israel today.

Circumstances in 2009 are unlike those in 2000, and I have very much less to do with it, but the week-long pilgrimage when the Pope prays for peace in the Middle East simply goes ahead. So what about it? Well, let me be candid.

Last month, I was chatting with a Catholic friend in Jerusalem and we were wondering together whether this was the most opportune moment for the visit to take place. After all, the invitation by the Israeli president Shimon Peres to the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Franco was extended last November, although it was kept under wraps until Ha'aretz, a leading Israeli daily newspaper, published the news earlier this year. Yet, the circumstances were somewhat less pressing at the time. In November, the controversy clouding the Catholic-Jewish relationship surrounded the late Pope Pius XII, with many Jews protesting against his canonisation - and ultimate beatification - since they felt that he had not spoken out strongly enough against the holocaust of the Jews by Hitler. However, that inherent problem was diplomatically dealt with when it was decided that the pope could visit Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial site, but side-step the museum that houses a contentious caption regarding this wartime pope.

Today, on the other hand, Palestinians and Israelis are bickering on both the political and community-based levels and many involved parties are voicing their deep-seated reservations about the visit. For instance, the location of the platform Pope Benedict XVI will stand on when he visits the Aida Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem on 13th May has become a bone of contention. Israel objects to the building of the platform and amphitheatre too close to the large cement wall that is part of the ugly separation wall. It claims that such proximity to the wall poses a security threat and that the Palestinians have not acquired the necessary permits to build those structures. Palestinians, on the other hand, wish to do exactly that in order to highlight the servile nature of their existence under occupation with a refugee camp, a wall and a watchtower of the Israeli army all pointing to the unresolved nature of the Israeli-Palestinian political conflict and the colonisation of one people by another.

There are other internecine discords too. There has been a lot of squabbling, for instance, as to whether the outdoor mass on 14th May should take place in Nazareth (at the Basilica of the Annunciation) or in Haifa - with Nazareth winning this round, as it did with John-Paul II in 2000. Or even whether the Pope should be driven around the venue in his glass-covered ‘pope-mobile’ due to perceived security threats against his person. Besides, the large Greek Catholic (Melkite) community in the Galilee whose Archbishop is the well-known and charismatic Fr Elias Chacour is not too happy at what it perceives as its marginalisation during this visit in favour of the smaller Latin-rite Catholics.

Not to be outdone when it comes to prevarications, the Israeli Jerusalem City Council have called upon the mayor not to attend any of the receptions in the capital as a protest over the participation by the Vatican last month in the UN human rights’ Durban 2 conference in Geneva that the Pope qualified as “an important initiative” but where Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a vitriolic keynote address against Israel. Moreover, residents of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem are also planning a sit-in protest at the Western Wall over the decision by the police to close the shrine for twelve hours during the papal visit.

Conversely, the Islamist Movement that consists of the largest Muslim group in Israel and is viewed by some as an advocate of Hamas announced that it too would boycott the papal visit due to the Pope’s Regensburg address in 2006 where they believe he impugned Islam and its holy prophet. Readers might well recall this was one of the so-called papal public “gaffes” and caused a huge hiccough in relations between the Catholic Church and Muslims at the time.

However, all this constitutes no more than an interesting background chatter to the mosaic of ecumenical, inter-faith and inter-religious issues in the Holy Land (and here I am re-using the same euphemism) that any reader of The Tablet or other magazines and web-sites could find out. I too lived them, breathed them and grappled with them for years when I was living in Jerusalem. Yet, in my view, they do not constitute serious objections to the pilgrimage. They are diplomatic headaches that could be glossed over with some wisdom and patience for the sake of a much greater good.

The least controversial part of the pilgrimage will be to Jordan. It is always good to start with this kingdom as a precursor for the more challenging stations and political minefields ahead. Christian and Muslim Jordanians get on quite well, and as HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal indicated recently in an interview, the papal visit provides an opportunity to improve relations between the monotheistic religions. But at the end of the day, the stop in Jordan is the safe option - a bit like Moses coming to the edge of a promised land, gazing at it, but not actually crossing into it.

Further onto Israel and the Palestinian territories, there are two clear difficulties with this pilgrimage. Is the Pope going to the region to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the indigenous Christian communities? If so, my first preoccupation centres on Gaza that witnessed in December 2008 a violent war violating many normative laws and I am left wondering about its moral subtext upon the Holy See. My second preoccupation centres on Benyamin Netanyahu’s prime-ministerial portfolio in Israel as it complicates manifold any concrete hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Yet, I suppose that even those two events could have been explained away with a postponement, but I would also concede that any such adjournment became virtually impossible when the Pope lifted the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops, including the Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson, on 21st January - four short days after the Gaza ceasefire. This decision - no matter how pastoral the Pope wished it to be in terms of healing intra-Catholic fissures - created such a storm that the cancellation of the journey to the Jewish state (for that is what the Israeli government thinks of the State of Israel) became simply unimaginable. Or else the repercussions would have been quite unhelpful.

So it is almost inevitable that political capital will be made from this pilgrimage. Israel would use it to the fullest extent to show the world its acceptable new-old face, whereas the Palestinian Authority which includes the Fateh faction of Mahmoud Abbas but excludes the Islamist Hamas movement will strive to bolster its legitimacy by hosting a prominent world shepherd par excellence who visits Bethlehem - the spiritual capital of a virtual Palestinian state.

All this being equal, and given the futility of my mooting for or against this pilgrimage, I would have suggested two principal amendments at the planning stages of this journey in order to make it even more powerful and meaningful.
My first pre-condition (for that is a word that applies here) would have been that Israel finally sign, seal and deliver without any additional prevarication the Fundamental Agreement that would manage the relationship between the State of Israel and the Catholic Church in the Holy Land. I know a thing or two about this non-agreement, as I was legal adviser at the initial stages, but it has been going on for so long that something needs to be done to have it finalised - and that includes endorsement by the Israeli Knesset [parliament] so the local churches could at long last have a legal frame of reference for their rights and responsibilities - such as work permits or property management - vis à vis Israel. This is quintessential for a local church establishment - be it Catholic, Orthodox or Reform - that feels overwhelmed, harried and tussled because no legal structures predicate the relationship inter partes. What better gift for the Pope to have brought with him to the Church of Jerusalem and therefore to the Christian living stones - his foremost and most important constituency during this visit after all. Or are they not the primary subjects of this pilgrimage?

My second pre-condition (and I still use of this word) would have been for the Pope to visit Gaza and meet with the miniscule Christian community and some church-related institutions or organisations as well as to witness the ravages that the strip has sustained as a result of the recent war or the unending economic and political boycott against its ordinary residents - though not necessarily its political cadres. After all, many EU delegates have been there already, as have the Secretary-General of the UN and US Senator John Kerry, so the presence of the Pope would not have been a political mishap but rather a welcome gesture of solidarity with an isolated and oft-forgotten Gaza whose story even figures in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. In this respect, a petition organised by academics and students from the Postgraduate Theological Union at the University of San Francisco, as well as other irenic groups, was sent to the Vatican. The petition - www.petitiononline.com/popegaza/petition.html - asserted, inter alia, that ‘as in all times, the way of reconciliation exemplified by Jesus calls us to initiate social healing by visiting, eating with, listening to, and risking our safety in solidarity with the “least among us” - in this case the people of Gaza.’ This would have laid an emphasis upon our Christian ministry for reconciliation. Or is this not the theme of the pilgrimage either?

In my humble opinion, Pope Benedict XVI is a truly remarkable man with an ineradicably robust faith. However, he follows in the steps of a Polish star, and part of the problem with this cerebral pope (as one writer suggested) is that he has a track record of blurring his compelling arguments. Indeed, when he visited Auschwitz in May 2006, he offended some Jews by asserting that the Nazis tried to destroy Christianity too. Four months later, he set off a firestorm among Muslims with a lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor in that the prophet Mohammed brought “things only evil and inhuman,” such as “his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” In Brazil last May, he incensed indigenous people in Latin America by suggesting that Christianity was not imposed on them, and in Cameroon he raised many heckles with his misconstrued comment about prophylactics.

Yet, as learned commentators have argued at some length, Pope Benedict was actually trying in each case to make a deeper point. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power. His Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence. In Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone’s spiritual experience. And in Africa, he was suggesting that condoms are not - and in fact cannot be - the answer to a permissive lifestyle devoid of personal responsibility.

Only last week, I was driving through Jdeideh, north of Dora in Beirut, when I came across a huge poster encouraging Lebanese Christians to travel to Jordan to meet the Pope. Mind you, I do hope he visits Lebanon and Syria too, since the Christian tradition is quite fertile in these lands too, and St Paul has something to say about it! Besides, the multi-confessional population of both countries could do with some encouragement and cheer. But this poster also told me how effective and eloquent the papal message could become as it oversteps cultures and frontiers. This is why in the final analysis I wish the Holy Father - a holy father after all - ample serenity in his demanding pilgrimage. I also pray that his pilgrimage will not limit itself to smiles, speeches, meetings, political encounters and occasional mea culpas, but that it will truly liberate and lift up the life, presence and witness of the Christian communities in the Holy Land.

Pope Benedict XVI often alludes to his concerns about an anaemic European Christianity. I trust he will introduce a qualitative difference to the lives of Middle Eastern Christians too - in this case for those in Jordan, Israel and Palestine - and that he would help affirm the rightful sense of belonging of local Christians to the larger inter-faith and inter-religious jigsaw of the region. I hope - and pray - that this will indeed occur as I say happy pilgrimage, your holiness.

This is Mannig Dobajian-Kouyoumjian’s spine-tingling testimony of her own experience as a survivor of the Armenian genocide. Last year, she had asked her daughter Aïda Kouyoumjian from Seattle to write her story for the US Holocaust Centre. It is a moving witness, a powerful declaration and a sobering story of the pain and humiliation of one victim of this genocide-driven mass campaign. Yet, it is also a story of how our faith helps us when we are coerced to drink from the bitter cup, a reminder of how the tenacity of hope overcomes deep despair, and evidence of how the compassionate Arab and Muslim worlds helped Armenian victims and welcomed them into their families and hearths across the whole Middle East.

The Armenian Genocide: as historians have asserted on the basis of ample archival evidence, this first genocide of the 20th century was perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government between 1915 and 1923 when it systematically and relentlessly targeted and killed Armenians within its Empire. Ultimately, well over one million ethnic Armenians, who incidentally were Ottoman and later Turkish citizens, lost their lives.

As an Armenian born after this grisly period of our history, I often wonder how our forbears managed to persevere in the face of such immense suffering and adversity. Not only did they, their families or friends undergo the most harrowing experiences, they also managed to pick themselves up and rebound from the devastation of their orphaned situations. It is their intrepid steadfastness and their belief in their collective identity as Armenians, that we - the younger generations - can now lead our lives more freely and with more confidence.

But what does this say about modern-day Turkey on the day when Armenians commemorate the 94th anniversary of the genocide? Equally importantly, what does it say of those across the world who still resist tooth and nail the idea of genocide - any acts of genocide, be they the Armenian one or other subsequent ones - with denial, and who debase human life and dignity for spurious political and economic considerations? How can we possibly claim to defend a political order based on human rights and common decency on the one hand only to stifle it on the other? Do denialists not recall George Santayana, a principal figure in classical American philosophy, asserting that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (in The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905).
As the American NPR broadcaster Scott Simon wrote in ‘Genocide’ is a Matter of Opinion, there are times when one has to utter the word ‘genocide’ in order to be accurate about mass murder that tries to extinguish a whole group. That is why the slaughter of a million Tutsis in Rwanda is not called merely mass murder. This is also why any politician who goes to Germany, for instance, and describes the Holocaust of European Jews merely as ‘terrible killings’ would be reviled without mercy and even prosecuted without appeal.

After all, did President Obama not also assume the high moral ground during the US presidential primaries by stating clearly that the Armenian people deserved “a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides”? Mind you, despite the high expectations and an air of suspense in the USA, this American president prevaricated in his Armenian Remembrance Day on 24th April when his written statement from the White House referred twice to the Armenian genocide as medz yeghern - translated literally as “great catastrophe” rather than “genocide” - and thereby joined a host of former US presidents who have relented from using the ‘g-word’. Is there a sad moral in this unfortunate recurrence? Is it that in a showdown between realpolitik and the truth, in other words between contemporary political expediency and the burden of past atrocities, the former seems to win most times? And if so, does this not sadly alert us - believers and humanists alike - how the values of our global world today often obviate words such as truth, conscience and honour?

24 April 2009: six years shy of a century and denial - no matter whether individual, collective or institutional - still contaminates the truth. Is it therefore not high time to put the record straight? Is it not time for Turkish officials to put jingoism, let alone misplaced pride or fear aside by recognising this unfortunate chapter of their Ottoman history during WWI? Is it not time for the Turkish judicial system today to stop invoking Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code and charging reporters or writers, including the Nobel laureate Orthan Pamuk, with the risible crime of ‘insulting Turkish national identity’ simply because they refer to the massacres of Armenians as genocide? Is it not time also for Turkish President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to prove their EU-friendly credentials and reformist integrity by mustering the political fortitude let alone moral rectitude to acknowledge past aberrations? Moreover, is it not time for the world community to embark upon a veritable phase of genocide education by underlining the eight stages of genocide that culminate with denial - as elaborated by Dr Gregory H Stanton in his Eight Stages of Genocide in 1998 when he was president of Genocide Watch? Or as the chartered clinical psychologist Aida Alayarian elucidated in her book Consequences of Denial, does the denial of the Armenian genocide not deprive its victims the opportunity to make sense of their experience, as much as render Turkish society unable to come to terms with its past, and therefore with itself?

Such recognition is not solely for the sake of Armenians. After all, I consider this genocide a historically-recognised reality even if some governments dither, equivocate and refuse to admit to it for reasons that have more to do with political weakness than historical truthfulness. Rather, it is also for the memory of all those righteous Turks who assisted, harboured and supported Armenians during this wounded chapter of history. But as a firm believer in forgiveness and reconciliation, it is ultimately for the sake of both Armenians and Turks alike so they can begin the painful but ineluctable journey toward a just closure of this open sore.

I am busy multi-tasking this evening: I am sitting in front of my laptop listening to The Next Step, a weekly pod-cast with Fr Vazken as he leads his listeners into Holy Week and helps us overcome our crosses by understanding Jesus’ desire to walk in our shoes. I am also watching a Journey to Jerusalem, an imaginative Christian Aid project that accompanies thousands of men and women on a virtual journey through the Holy Land. With an input from people who have travelled in the region - and those that live and work there - we cyber-pilgrims have not only been visiting the biblical sites but have also been hearing what it means to live and witness in this broken part of the world and to toil for peace despite innumerable challenges. This virtual journey that culminates this week in Jerusalem began on the first day of Lent, 25th February, from the Mount of Temptation near Jericho and has already stopped in Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza, Sderot, Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Nazareth amongst many stations. Along the way, there have been reflections on what Jesus’ example can teach us about making a difference in the world, and short You Tube blogs that have underscored the spiritual dimension of peace-building.

But why did Christian Aid undertake this journey? In a nutshell, it provides an opportunity to hear directly, from both Israelis and Palestinians, about their rich narratives of optimism and pessimism, of joy, fear, uncertainty, violence, suffering, frustration or ultimately hope. I suppose viewers would have their own special moments during this virtual pilgrimage. I was particularly gripped, for instance, by the virtual time I spent in Gaza and saw the devastation and discrimination suffered by ordinary Palestinians in this strip of land, or by the way one film-maker, Nour al-Halaby, challenged the stereotypes we bear in our minds of the peoples of this region. But I was equally inspired with hope when I watched a blog visit to Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as ordinary people laboured for understanding and reconciliation, or when I heard bereaved families who are part of the Parents Circle - Families Forum sharing their anxieties as Palestinians and Israelis who have lost kith and kin, and yet have come together to struggle for peace.

Let me paraphrase Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia, a leading religion and society think-tank in England, who commented on this Journey to Jerusalem, by pointing out that it will contribute to the movement for hope and change in Israel-Palestine as well as open our eyes and hearts to what is going on in this land and its significance in human and spiritual terms. He also added, and here I quote, “This imaginative initiative captures the true spirit of Lent, which is not just about detaching ourselves from the selfish impulses which end up dividing human communities; it also positively unites us to the dream and struggle of ‘a new world coming’ in the midst of tension and fear.”

For me, Lent reflects multiple facets, but it is principally a period for meditation, mirroring the time Jesus spent in the desert, and on the Mount of Temptation, wrestling with the call on his life. So I see this virtual journey - with its comments, images, witnesses, and prayers from the likes of Revd Naim Ateek in different towns or villages - as another opportunity to introduce largely uninformed “pilgrims” to the faith-based truths and cutting realities in a Holy Land of two peoples and three faiths - Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the political hurly-burly of all the regional conflicts, some of us tend to forget that Christians - the Living Stones that St Peter refers to in his first epistle (1 Pet 2:5) - are indigenous to the land, with co-equal rights and obligations, and are an indissoluble part of the wider universal Christian fellowship. We need to wake up to this fact, recognise it, not tuck it away or ignore it, and act accordingly in our lives.

Two thoughts constantly criss-crossed my mind whenever watching this virtual journey. The first is a powerful statement by an Israeli Jewish woman in one blog who underlined the deep-rooted difficulties of peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians but added that we should not give up hope, even if progress is as slow and frustrating ‘as taking water out of the sea with a teaspoon’! The second evocative thought is attributed to St Augustine of Hippo, reminding us that hope has two children: anger and courage, anger at the way things are in the world, and the courage to do something to change it.

Today, my own Lenten faith journey forces me to pause first in front of the daunting shadows of death on Good Friday (or, appropriately enough, al-joum’a al-hazina / Sad Friday in Arabic) to recall, sense and also mourn the heavy significance of the crucifixion. Otherwise, how can I truly move on toward the glorious joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday? But even now, the journey does not end with the empty tomb. This perplexing space of nothingness so replete with meaning is a living witness to the reconciliation between God and humankind, and yet also highlights our abject collective failure to date to make peace with each other. No surprise then if I recall Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as he blessed peacemakers (Mt 5:9) and wish all Palestinian and Arab Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere a real - not virtual - Easter.

Being a peacemaker is part of being surrendered to God, for God brings peace. We abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of enemies. God comes to us in Christ to make peace with us; and we participate in God's grace as we go to our enemies to make peace.
Glen H Stassen & David P Gushee, Kingdom Ethics

25 March 2008: five days ago, the Lebanese Council of Ministers unanimously decreed that this date will henceforth become a Muslim-Christian national feast day so that members of both faith communities come together annually around the theme of Together around Mary: Our Lady and exalt Sitna Mariam (St Mary, mother of Jesus). Given that both Muslims and Christians revere Mary in their respective holy books, albeit in different ways, this feast hopes to draw them together, and in so doing perhaps focus on what unites rather than what separates them. There are also plans to export this feast to Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Poland, Italy and France next year as an innovative platform for inter-religious and inter-regional dialogue.

I liked this rather unusual idea, and I pray that that this Marian icon will manage to become an apolitical - or at least non-politicised - catalyst providing the foundation for a further coming together of all Lebanese communities. But the irony - and I suppose ultimately the strength - of such a project is that it has found its genesis in a country with so many tectonic confessional plates. It is encouraging that a resilient Lebanon of ever-decreasing cedars, increasingly busy these days gearing itself up toward the parliamentary elections of 7th June, can find the time, space and will to institute this symbolic feast.

Yet, important as religious symbols are for Lebanon, a more crucial symbol looms ahead in the shape of the results of the forthcoming elections. They would elicit the alliances and political forces of the two respective political coalitions of 8th March and 14th March and perhaps even trace a trajectory for the future course, development and possible re-alignments of the whole country as politicians change camps, consolidate their gains or suffer their losses.

This is why a closer look reveals myriad tensions, uncertainties and spats underlying political structures. In fact, feuds can be witnessed during almost every meeting of the Lebanese cabinet whose current template for governance was drafted by a finite Doha Agreement and which at times reflects more a sense of disunion than of union. The two major political blocs busily vie for influence, with the electoral lists of candidates in different constituencies - especially in critical ones such as the Metn - proving hard to put together because everyone pushes their sectarian affiliations at the expense of the larger good.

Interestingly enough, the Armenian Tashnaq party has now assumed the role of kingmaker in this mêlée: their seats in Beirut, the Metn and Zahlé could together tilt the balance of power between the two coalitions. No wonder then that politicians from both blocs, let alone from within the same blocs, have feverishly canvassed for their votes. Armenians, who number around 150,000, would probably sway the results in the Beirut 1 district (including Achrafieh, Saifi and Rmeil) where most Christians live today, However, the three Armenian parties (Tashnaq, Ramgavar and Henchak) who do not always see eye-to-eye politically should also be prudent with their choices and examine the consequences of their alliances or any breach of their historical neutrality and long-standing support for the incumbent presidency.

But the disagreements in the cabinet - whether over the national annual national budget and the amount to be allocated to the Council for South, over judicial appointments, over the national dialogue under the auspices of the president or even over the location of ministerial offices and telephone wiretapping - are all sapping the strength of the country and fomenting quite dangerous polarisations amongst its diverse communities. Lebanon is a tinderbox, and there is always the fear that a minor event could catapult the whole country into a major confrontation. Still, perils notwithstanding, nobody seems capable to take bold visionary decisions or make concessions at this critical stage without the risk of alienating their constituencies.

Interestingly enough, I realise that a majority of the Lebanese population of all hues and backgrounds are well-meaning and hard-working, let alone canny enough to suss out their leaders’ agendas. Yet, their populist hopes are negated not only by the inveterate ambitions and confessional nature of Lebanese politics, but also by this bizarre political setup in a Lebanon whereby the majority and opposition parties are meant to work together consensually. They sit together around the same cabinet table and participate collectively in the decisions of government. Yet, their interventions are more like endless filibusters that simply arrest any decision-making process. Besides, what aggravates the anomalous situation further is that the minority parties within government retain their veto on all decisions through their one-third blocking votes in cabinet. In other words, any cabinet decision can easily be unmade or frozen. One wonders how any constructive democratic decision could then be taken as each side checkmates the other with glib ease. I do not think I have ever come in my constitutional studies across any system of governance that places the winning and losing sides together in government.

But let me go back to the elections. Overall, even when factoring into the equation all those questionable nominations that occur via what the PSP Druze leader Walid Jumblatt described as “asphalt bulldozers” (political favours made to gain voters’ support that include paving roads), the numerical results of the ballots are more or less clear for the Sunni, Shi’i and Druze constituents. But they fall apart quite sharply in relation to the constellation of Christian parties. So what happens with the Christian vote is crucial in defining the future Christian presence in Lebanon - not only as an essential fabric of Lebanese history and plurality but also of regional Eastern Christian presence - and in underlining its future witness. For instance, despite his repeated assertions to the contrary, I believe that the FPM movement led by General Michel Aoun who sees himself as the Christian tsar is losing some ground and seems less likely now to become the undisputed Christian party in the next parliament - certainly not when his former ally, the Greek Orthodox Michel el-Murr, claims that he is no longer with Aoun, and when State Minister Nassib Lahoud busily consolidates his independent but largely pro-14th March platform.
In addition, the outspoken patriarch of the Maronite Church has also been admonishing the parties to be cautious and the voters to be wise with their choices. On 16th March, this ageing and increasingly less relevant church leader warned that “voters must know who they will be choosing to defend their basic rights... They must not forget the proverb, ‘whoever buys you shall sell you.’” But the influence of the church has been in steady decline and Maronite politicians are increasingly breaking ranks with it. As such, it will be interesting to observe how the ballot box will address intra-Christian rivalries and transubstantiate the results of the elections into hard facts that can then be exercised peaceably on the ground.
As important, and arguably more decisive than the parliamentary elections, is the proceedings of the forthcoming Special Tribunal for Lebanon that will convene in The Hague to examine the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri - father of House Majority Leader Saad Hariri. The four generals in custody suspected of involvement in this assassination are meant to be transferred to the court in The Hague soon so their innocence or guilt is determined by the panel of judges. A Memorandum of Understanding between Lebanon and the Special Tribunal coordinates the flow of communication between both sides. In a rare interview recently, Daniel Bellemare, the Canadian general prosecutor for the Special Tribunal, told the Canadian television programme Envoyé Special that “no phantoms planted the bomb to assassinate Hariri. There were real people behind the bombs, and we are capable of finding them.” As such, the repercussions of this trial - barring any violence - could be quite acute, more so since Rafik Hariri’s murder and of a host of other bombings and assassinations is what put in motion much of the developments in Lebanon over the past four telling years.
When one speaks of Lebanon, of elections and tribunals, one cannot overlook the Syrian influence that has overshadowed this country since the Taëf Agreement (Document of National Accord) of 1989. Despite all the recent international moves to transform Lebanon and Syria into independent states with normal diplomatic relations, the Syrian regime should strive to improve the situation further by facilitating the process of disengagement between the two countries. Although ambassadors have been exchanged for the first time in the history of Syro-Lebanese relations (Michel el-Khoury for Lebanon, and Ali Abdel Karim Ali for Syria), scant effort has been deployed to date to resolve the thorny issues of border demarcation, Lebanese detainees in Syrian custody, and the disputed territory of the Sheba’a Farms. Only today, at the 21st Arab Summit in Qatar, the Syrian president postulated mechanisms on how to manage intra-Arab disagreements but did not define on how to solve them. So many pundits await the next set of Syrian moves as they will not only impact Lebanon but also the geopolitics of the wider region. However, it is clear that the constancy, sharpness and shrewdness of Syrian foreign policy are now yielding dividends. After all, Syria is being courted by France, the USA and Saudi Arabia - which had opposed it vociferously in the past - and has also resumed its role as maker or breaker of deals. What happens in the future is relevant, since the Syrian stance could heavily affect not only Lebanese independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and prosperity, but also other regional factors including Iran, Palestine and to some lesser extent in Iraq.
Last week, the Lebanese parliament approved a draft law to allow voting rights to 18-year-olds. If the government approves this draft law within the statutory period of four months, it will enable the younger generations to vote in the 2010 municipal elections. Although some key players are concerned that this measure could well create a demographic power imbalance in the country, I still regard it is a positive step and hope that Nabih Berri’s Parliament and Fouad Siniora’s Government would act in concert - and in the same vein - when tackling other pending issues too. Perhaps Lebanese politicians would heed President Suleiman’s recommendation for the establishment of a Senate according to Article 7 of the Taëf Accord - later integrated as Article 22 into the Lebanese Constitution. The Taëf Accord had envisioned a bicameral government, with parliament elected on a non-sectarian basis and sectarian representation being relegated to the second chamber.

In my contacts with Lebanese colleagues and friends, I am constantly amazed by the flexible and enterprising nature of the Lebanese character. Despite bloody wars and a surfeit of doom and gloom - so much so that many younger generations are still traumatised by it - the Lebanese psyche remains quite robust and its entrepreneurship manages to re-build the country after each calamity. Just look at how the Central Bank of Lebanon is managing to sustain the stability of the financial market when richer countries are almost up against the wall as they heap billions into creating uncertain fiscal stimulus packages.

Today, despite my self-confessed pessoptimism, I would argue that the Lebanese file stands a chance for building a peaceful national compact so long as good will and good faith join hands to serve the interest of the Lebanese people and their public institutions. But would realism in Lebanon help set its spirit free, or would it muzzle itself with more tensions?

Developments in the Middle East in general are usually so swift, and yet also so subtle at times, that it is quite easy to miss out on some of their finer nuances. There is always the easy temptation to continue adhering to age-old classical and frankly sclerotic interpretations that are duly regurgitated by some politicians or pundits who think they know better anyway. No wonder then that we are often swept away with ideas that aggravate - rather than improve - the overall political, socio-economic and inter-religious realities of this troubled region.

So let me focus today on some developments that are presently taking place within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel itself, the world will soon become re-acquainted with a prime minister who wears an old face but a new suit. Indeed, it is almost certain that this “new” prime minister will be Benyamin Netanyahu. And although the world community half expected his government to reflect the right-wing extremism of some of the factions that have already thrown their lot with him, it seems that the two-week extension that President Shimon Peres granted Netanyahu might have helped him broaden the base of such a government with the likes of Labour leader Ehud Barak. So there is animation in some international and Arab circles that a level of ‘moderation’ might well seep into the future policies of such a coalition. However, this is where I believe most of the analyses go off the rail! True, with Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister - he who once reportedly suggested that Israel should destroy the Aswan dam in Egypt in order to flood Cairo - and with his movement Yisrael Beiteinu also possibly controlling other sensitive portfolios, one can almost feel the revanchist pangs of a further defeat of peace and a growing realisation that Israel will not concede an independent Palestinian state, whether it is led by the Gaza-based Hamas and therefore ideologically unrelenting or by the more pragmatic and therefore pliable Ramallah-based Fateh. But I would invite the reader to think soberly and objectively whether a broader government with other coalition partners - such as Shas (with the key ministries of Interior and Housing) and Labour (with its putative portfolios) - would necessarily deliver peace? What about the lessons or precedents of history let alone the stance of those very same politicians in past years? The conflict is about concrete issues, not cosmetic personalities - otherwise, we will have already sorted out this conflict and would now be living in a peaceful Arab-Israeli-Palestinian Elysium!

Indeed, Netanyahu’s oft-stated focus for ameliorating the economic viability of Palestinians rather than enabling the creation of their state is a sop that cannot wash with most Palestinians any longer. Over the past two decades, it has become clear that the Israeli political elite - from the higher echelons to the lower mandarins, and whether on the left or right of the mercurial political spectrum - do not by and large wish to conclude any peace agreement with Palestinians that would involve painful concessions and unavoidable territorial withdrawals. There are certainly some notable exceptions, but most would prefer to continue colonising a whole Palestinian people so long as they lay their hands on the geography and resources of this land and try to keep Palestinians quiescent by offering them a few political crumbs.

Meanwhile, the facts that Israel creates on the ground are fearsome. Let me refer to a 20-page report of 15 December 2008 initiated by EU Consuls-General in Jerusalem along with their colleagues in Ramallah published in Le Nouvel Observateur on 18th March. It rings chilling alarm bells about the future of Jerusalem, and constitutes an indictment of Israeli use of settlement expansion, the separation wall, by-pass roads, resident permits for Palestinians, displacements or deportations and the E-1 Plan connecting Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem “to pursue actively its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.”

This ‘confidential’ report, that was destined for Javier Solana, EU foreign and security policy chief, remained shelved for three months. Yet, it highlights some sobering facts: out of the 470,000 settlers presently in the OPT, 190,000 (or roughly 40%) are in Jerusalem and another 96,000 around Jerusalem - with the majority in settlement blocs such as Givat Ze’ev, Etzion and Ma’ale Adumim. The report further adds that 86% of the trajectory of the separation wall, including in Jerusalem, lies inside the 1949 armistice line and that 385,000 settlers are living on the Israeli side of the wall. Conversely, 285,000 Palestinians live between the wall and the Green Line in a no man’s land that also cuts them off from the West Bank. In a nutshell, this report argues that the successive faits accomplis Israel has been creating on the ground drain the credibility of the Palestinian Authority as the Israeli supposed partner and as such weaken any residual popular support for peace negotiations between the parties. Interestingly enough, this report is not unlike a similar one from 2005 that was also shelved then, so I am afraid I can show scant anticipation about its impact either.

In fact, I would suggest that the days when Israel would have accepted peace followed the creation of its state, namely in 1948, 1956 and 1967. I am just old enough to remember the veteran politician Abba Eban whose one eloquent declaration in London in 1970 stated that “history teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” So had all the alternatives been exhausted after the 1973 war, and have conditions changed since then so that both parties learn not to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity? I think not, since Israeli overconfidence by then had already exceeded the bounds of what is manageable and a different power play started establishing itself within the Israeli psyche. The report of the EU Consuls-General clarifies in my opinion that Israel is in no haste to make peace with the Palestinians, and that the much-vaunted two-state solution that is still being marketed in some political corridors has become largely moribund despite illusory or romantic assertions to the contrary.

Therefore, I would argue that the intelligent strategy now would examine what needs to be done absent any real hope for the re-launch of a viable peace initiative in the foreseeable future. The international community - including the otiose Quartet and its peripatetic envoy - still perpetuate the unreality of a possible peaceful resolution that would lead to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. But would a bit of honesty not reveal that the searing consequences of the occupation to date render such an outcome almost unachievable and that the legal and political fundaments facilitating it are well nigh inexistent? What is probable is not necessarily possible in peacemaking. In that sense, I find the Likud policies at least less contrived and more open about Israeli intentions toward peace and conflict management. After all, they call a spade a spade rather than pretending it to be anything else.

What about the other side of the coin then - namely the Arab countries as well as Palestinian factions? The Arab countries, riven between the so-called axes of confrontation and moderation, are politically limp and seem to spend much time check-mating each other in the hope that the ‘other’ side will not grow too much stronger. In some sense though, it is Iran, not Israel, which has now become the understated nemesis of some countries. Whilst the majority of inter-Arab conciliatory efforts - and summits - purport to deal with the ravages of an Israeli occupation and its aggression against Palestinians, they target tangentially Iran and strive to circumvent any regional extension of Iranian-style Shi’i influence. Mind you, it is an interesting moot point to explore how the putative presidential election of Mir-Hossein Mousavi as president in the Iranian elections of 12th June - with a possible appointment of Khatami as foreign minister - might affect Arab-Iranian relations let alone impact Israeli tactical policies as much as Western reactions over the nuclear issue. That is why President Obama’s well-calibrated and introductory invitation to the Iranian people and leadership for dialogue is an essential component for the start of a familiar but necessary bargaining process. The litmus test for its success would consist of underlining the global parameters of such a relationship and its attendant measures. As the syndicated journalist Rami Khouri put it in an article this week, the USA should resist lecturing others and tackle its lingering streak of arrogance if it wishes to move forward in its relations with Iran (and also with other regional players).

Moreover, Arab ructions are exacerbated further by deep Palestinian divisions. The ongoing efforts at dialogue between Fateh, Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Cairo will no doubt eventually produce a format for an agreement - due more to exogenous rather than endogenous pressures. However, they would not rapidly heal the prurient wounds gashing the whole Palestinian national body or (more vitally) refine a common vision for the future when the positions of the parties themselves are antithetical. In fact, one rudimental issue is how any agreement inter partes would consider those accords that have already been concluded between the Palestinian Authority and Israel - mainly during and subsequent to the Oslo years? And thereafter, how would the West react to a government of national consensus (wifaq watani) that does not subscribe to those principal pre-conditions for dialogue? After all, it rejected such a government earlier! The negotiators might well band-aid those wounds and gloss over their divergences, but we all know that band-aids peel off. Yet, despite such impediments, Hamas cannot remain a pariah for much longer in the region and will gradually be re-integrated into the political process - initially by the EU with its test balloons, before the Obama Administration in all likelihood joins the marketplace. The visits to Gaza by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, by Senator John Kerry and recently by a high-level EU delegation, are ways of gradually bringing Hamas in from the cold and giving substance to the reality that the PLO is weakening its hold on the dynamics of the peace process. That is why it makes sense that Palestinians heal their wounds before they lose the plot - and the land - completely and then usher in the much-anticipated legislative and presidential elections.

What about President Obama’s fresh Administration? It is true that the president is trying to extend an open hand to former foes and underlining the merits of dialogue, engagement and smart diplomacy. However, whether such policies anchor themselves in practical measures, evoke reciprocity or remain piecemeal, I do not believe Obama can put his full weight behind any deal that coerces Israel to respond to the collective peace overtures of the Arab countries - including the much-discussed Arab League initiative adopted unanimously at the Beirut Summit in 2002 and rebooted in Riyadh in 2007. After all, I seriously question whether the American president can afford to confront the Israeli government, Congress / Senate and the US-based lobbies (and particularly AIPAC) without blinking first. Yet, this is exactly what the president should do since the American policy to date that Israel can do no wrong has been calamitous - not least for Israeli long-term security. This is what the well-known Aaron Miller, public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, implied recently when commenting that American policies toward Israel have undermined both Israeli and American interests for the past 16 years. But the Israeli and Jewish lobbies are still far too influential, and I recall Pat Buchanan’s politically-incorrect statement as far back as 1990 that Capitol Hill is an Israeli occupied territory. But just look at what happened to Charles (Chas) Freeman, US former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who was being vetted for the post of chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the new Obama Administration. He allegedly had to withdraw his name from the process due to Israeli-inspired and Jewish-mounted American pressure upon him and upon the US Administration.
In my opinion, the expectation voiced almost mantra-like by many parties that the USA should become “an honest broker” and stop supporting Israel unequivocally is a convenient opt-out if not also a redundant or even false premise. Rather, the question should be whether there is a way to impress upon the US Administration and its American constituencies that their collective interests dictate more even-handedness and honesty when dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian let alone Arab-Israeli conflicts. I would argue that the president understands this distinction, but I am not confident he would be able to shift policies and positions - more than minimally - to accommodate such an outcome.

But something has to give for the sake of peace - and truly for the sake of Palestinians as well as Israelis - in terms of the mindsets and actions of those involved in the process. Imagine that the USA and its allies have mislaid so much of their political rectitude in the past decade that they now refer to ‘disputed Palestinian lands’, not occupied ones, and view the settlement of Palestinian land as well as the evacuation of its people as ‘unhelpful’ rather than illegal. They act with diffidence when it comes to Israeli transgressions against International law as evidenced during the Gaza war last year. In fact, it is this skewered attitude toward International law and politics that led to a global call for an investigation into the Gaza conflict by a 16-strong group including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, former Irish president and UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson and Justice Richard Goldstone. The world's veteran investigators and judges addressed this letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as well as to all members of the UN Security Council wherein they demanded a full international investigation into alleged abuses of international law during the bombardment and occupation of the Gaza Strip. The signatories - who have led investigations of crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, East Timor, Lebanon and Peru - argued that the UN investigation ‘should not be limited only to attacks on UN facilities.’ Only yesterday, Richard Falk, a UN human rights investigator and international lawyer from Princeton University also questioned in a new report to the UN Human Rights Council the legality and one-sided nature of the Israeli incursion in Gaza.

Let me conclude with a thought that crystallises the formidable task ahead for multi-track negotiators, given the incongruous remoteness of a two-state solution today. As some readers are aware already, the Arab League nominated Jerusalem as The Capital of Arab Culture 2009. Yet, the Israeli authorities used their customary “presence” (in other words intimidating force) to forestall any Palestinian celebrations not only in Jerusalem but also in Nazareth. Consequently, the bulk of the event took place by proxy in Bethlehem. For one, this shows Israeli obsessive and suppressive concern for any Palestinian activities that would imply attachment, involvement and by implication sovereignty to the city of Jerusalem or to any sense of Palestinian national identity in the occupied territories and even in Israel itself. But it also betrays both a heavy-handed reaction to any Palestinian civic manifestation and a fear almost that the genie should not be let out in case it cannot be forced back into the bottle again! The clashes that took place at Umm el-Fahm today, when Baruch Marzel and some of his fellow Jewish extremists from Kach marched into this town, were a brazen show of provocation. So does it truly surprise anyone that the Israeli-Palestinian file is decidedly unpromising and sadly iffy, and that a fresh irenic track has to be found to rejuvenate it?

I often struggle to remain an optimist, not to become a pessimist. But optimism that strays violently outside the prism of realism becomes questionable. So I have adopted a quaint word from the writings of the late Nazarene novelist Emile Habibi to describe myself as a pessoptimist, hopeful of promise but careful enough to recognise the hurdles ahead. In that sense, I would rally with Habibi’s frank - and at times suitably honest and controversial - statements by suggesting that an Israeli-Palestinian file that is facing a serious impasse could well witness the unravelling of a national - and legitimate - dream unless there is a concerted movement to remedy what is clearly a dereliction of duty by the world comity.

I pray that the ongoing political shenanigans in Israel-Palestine do not lead to more deaths and violence or induce the bloody settling of scores on all sides that emulate a lex talionis for direct retribution - as expressed in the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Scriptures. No more “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an arm for an arm and a life for a life”. But more than mere prayers, I also use the words of the Irish novelist James Joyce to express the hope that the current muddling signs across this volatile land would be managed with more wisdom and caution … and so lead us all ‘toward less muddle’.